


Whenever This World Is Cruel To Me

by NortheasternWind



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Gen, M/M, Presumed Dead, snakes having six rows of teeth total
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-06-25
Updated: 2019-08-27
Packaged: 2020-05-19 06:34:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,776
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19351447
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NortheasternWind/pseuds/NortheasternWind
Summary: Aziraphale doesn't manage to call Crowley until after Hastur is trapped in his voicemail. With a quick lie, lingering holy water and some hellfire Hastur manages to convince both parties that their best friend is dead.





	1. Chapter 1

Aziraphale does not manage to call Crowley before Shadwell interrupts him. It takes a small miracle and a large wad of cash to send Shadwell off none the wiser, but Aziraphale manages it without stepping into the circle and discorporating himself. In the moment he considers this a success, though later he will wonder if he couldn’t have spared them all some unnecessary heartache if he had failed.

Aziraphale inches carefully around the circle, returns to the shop’s phone, and dials his best friend.

He has, for better or for worse, wasted too much time.

“Crowley!” he cries, once the line goes live. He can’t wait a second longer to begin his apology, which is a shame, because he might have thought better of his next words in that case. “Crowley, I know where the Antichrist is—”

“Do you?”

Aziraphale is shocked into silence. This is not Crowley’s voice, unless Crowley’s voice has become deeper and more menacing since they last spoke in front of the bookshop.

“Excuse me,” he says, slightly baffled. “To whom am I speaking?”

The answer is a sinister laugh. “So you’re the infamous Aziraphale,” the voice goes on, apparently ignoring him. Ah, must be a—

Oh dear. Must be a demon.

_The forces of Hell have figured out it was my fault._

Aziraphale feels the beat of his body’s heart quicken, a cold feeling settling in the pit of his stomach. Crowley said he was running away— but he also said he was going home first. He might not have been home, and for now Aziraphale decides to cling to that, because the alternative is… dangerous.

“I do believe you are breaking and entering,” he says with some asperity, mind working furiously. Aziraphale has occasionally met with his superiors in his bookshop, but Crowley would never invite other demons into his flat, and so he is quite confident in this conclusion. But that still leaves Aziraphale with a demon in Crowley’s flat, and Crowley not there, and no explanation for either of those truths except what his imagination can provide.

“Well, we did ring the doorbell first.”

Aziraphale has nothing to say to that. That’s actually rather polite of them.

“I’d like a change of scenery, though,” the voice continues. “And I’d also like to meet Crowley’s little pigeon friend.”

“Oh dear,” Aziraphale says, out loud this time.

A maggot wiggles its way out of the receiver. He’d been expecting it, but Aziraphale still lets out a rather unangelic yelp and backs away, hastily inching back around the circle as an avalanche of writhing insects and larvae come pouring from the phone, building in a great mound that stretches its fingers out toward Aziraphale—

At least until it hits the circle, at which point some of the maggots squeal and sizzle away, and the mound collapses in on itself and grows until it is shaped like a man instead of a pile of fly children.

(Aziraphale will wonder later why Hastur transformed into maggots instead of, say, tadpoles. Perhaps he and Beelzebub switched.)

The newly formed demon takes a slow, deliberate look around, and Aziraphale quietly takes the opportunity to unlock the door behind him. Black eyes with a frog on his head— this must be Hastur, the demon that destroyed the records at Tadfield Manor, and the subject of many of Crowley’s multiple complaints about Hell and its inhabitants.

There was a demon in Crowley’s flat. Now there is a demon in Aziraphale’s bookshop.

Hastur sneers. “You don’t look like much. Why does Crowley bother with you?”

Aziraphale’s chances of teasing information out of Hastur subtly before violence occurs are looking rather slim, so he goes for the direct approach instead. “Where is he? What were you doing in his flat?”

And here, further, is another moment when Aziraphale’s luck runs dry: Hastur is not a smart demon, by any means, nor a particularly creative one. He does, however, know the power of watching allies die: he has just experienced it himself, was reduced momentarily to a screaming fit after watching Ligur dissolve into a puddle of demonic goo.

He doesn’t know exactly what it means to be someone’s friend, but he does know that Crowley and Aziraphale are allies, at least, and that’s good enough for him.

“Dangerous game, keeping holy water so close,” Hastur says in a low voice, and watches with satisfaction as Aziraphale’s eyes widen and his shoulders drop— as though he were a puppet cut free from its strings. “Especially when you’re expecting company…”

A high noise fills Aziraphale’s ears. Crowley is smarter than that. He wanted it for precisely this reason— to use on other demons, not to have it stolen and used on him.

Crowley is smart. Crowley is clever. Crowley would never…

“Why should I believe you?” he demands, though his voice is rather higher-pitched than he prefers. “You’re a demon. Demons lie.”

“It doesn’t matter. Our lord will call his servants to him, and you will die here, unable to stop him.”

“I’ll do no such thi—”

Here is some useful information about demons:

There are ten million of them, give or take some thousands, but the vast majority of them cannot produce hellfire. Hellfire is a resource, one that must be created and stored, and then brought out when it is called for. As such, for the lesser demons hellfire is a precious resource that most ration and guard for emergencies, or for particularly sour grudges.

Hastur is a Duke of Hell. He does have the power to create hellfire, and while he cannot make much— well, it hardly matters when he is standing in a building of flammable material, and Aziraphale is wearing flammable, human-made clothing that has seen nearly two hundred years of wear.

Hastur’s hand shoots forward, and with a startled yelp Aziraphale miracles a bookshelf into the space between them. It bursts into infernal flame and begins to tip backwards, toward Aziraphale, who miraculously nudges it the other way, turns tail, and flees, not keen to waste time on Hastur when the world is ending and Crowley is missing.

Hastur spits flame onto the magic sigil, burning away just enough to turn it off, then steps forth and blows the bookshelf to pieces.

Aziraphale is already out the door.

No matter. Hastur smiles a demonic smile, turns, and begins systematically setting the rest of the bookshop on fire, so he can watch the paper curl and turn to smoke, so he can take some joy in destroying an angel’s precious possessions, and because Crowley has only one ally in the world— and if Hastur had one ally in the world he knows exactly where he would go next.

* * *

Crowley, unfortunately, arrives by way of the street Aziraphale does not flee through.

He does call Aziraphale on his way over, which helps him not at all: the phone doesn’t even begin to ring, just goes straight to informing him that his call cannot be completed, would he please try again later?

It’s the message that plays when Aziraphale is already using the phone— but, he thinks, looking at the flames that have inexplicably replaced his phone’s photo of his only friend, it’s also the message that plays when the line no longer exists.

He’s just paranoid. Ligur is dead, and Hastur is trapped. It’s probably a call from Heaven, although knowing that Aziraphale can’t hang up on Heaven to answer him instead is a pain all its own. There’s only one obvious thing for Crowley to do now, so Crowley puts the thought out of his mind and continues to speed his way through London.

It doesn’t much matter how much thought he does or doesn’t put into it, because his conclusion upon reaching his destination is the same. He highly doubts Aziraphale purposefully set his own bookshop on fire.

“Excuse me!” a firefighter shouts. “Are you the owner of this establishment?”

“Do I look like I run a bookshop?” Crowley answers sourly, and steps into the flaming building.

As soon as the doors close behind him Crowley feels it: the infernal stench of hellfire, the sort of smell that clings to you long after you’ve washed its source away. Fire is bad enough— the thought that someone might have maliciously sent Aziraphale back to Heaven, bodiless, really grinds his intestines in a way that makes his stomach complain quite passionately— but the thought of Aziraphale being gone, truly gone—

“Aziraphale!”

It can’t be. He’d been so careful, he’d made sure Hell didn’t know about Aziraphale, didn’t know they were friends and certainly didn’t know where to find him. There is no reason whatsoever for the bookshop to be literally burning in the flames of Hell, the only thing that could take Aziraphale from him for eternity. It doesn’t occur to him to wonder if Aziraphale escaped: he must be here, if only Crowley can find him!

“Aziraphale, where the Heaven are you?! I can’t find you—”

He cannot sense Aziraphale here, where he always is. But Aziraphale has always chosen kindness, so if Crowley shouts loud enough, if he can make Aziraphale feel his desperation, then Aziraphale will almost certainly appear to ease it.

“Crowley,” Hastur greets lowly, as though he has always been there.

Crowley freezes, and turns to look. It is definitely Hastur, and not some illusion or demonic twin he’s been keeping secret all this time. Hastur is here, and not in Crowley’s voicemail, and behind him the bookshop phone lays abandoned on the floor.

“Hastur!” Crowley returns genially, purely by reflex.

Hastur breaks into a grin that shows altogether too many teeth. “He called for you.”

Hastur, as pointed out before, is not very smart. What Hastur means to say is, ‘he called your phone and set me free, and here I am, having definitely killed him and set fire to his domicile.’

But what Crowley hears is ‘he cried out for you when I killed him, believing right up until the end that you would come save him, and you didn’t,’ and this awakens something hot and ugly in him that 6000 years of restraint can’t control.

Crowley lets out an inhuman shriek and dives, reaching blindly for Hastur’s neck. Hastur simply miracles himself closer, so that Crowley’s hands fall uselessly past him and Hastur may grab his collar, holding him fast with a slimy smirk.

“There’s nowhere—”

He never finishes. Crowley lunges forward in Hastur’s grip and sinks demonic teeth into Hastur’s throat.

There is a struggle, though for the sake of stomachs everywhere it shall remain undescribed. All that matters is the outcome: a demon collapses limp on the floor of the bookshop as Crowley spits out his prize. Feels anger— and everything else— drain out of him. Wipes his chin.

“Gross,” he mutters, and turns to leave. His extraneous heart has stopped beating. There is nothing left for him here.

He picks up the nearest mostly-intact book— souvenir— and throws the doors open. The firefighters don’t bother him this time; there’s no point in saving his strength, or his miracles. There are nothing but enemies left now, so he may as well make whatever remains of his time on Earth convenient. No one asks him to explain as he crosses the street and climbs into the Bentley, feeling the weight of the door more than he ever has in 90 years.

He carelessly tosses the book onto the passenger seat. It slides off, and something tips out of the open pages.

Crowley doesn’t care about that or anything else anymore, but he frowns despite himself. Aziraphale has— had— a strict No Inserts Except Flowers And Bookmarks policy, and even then he mostly found other ways to dry flowers or mark his pages.

He leans down, scoops up the paper— a map, it seems— and opens it, more to wallow in curiosity over his perished friend than anything else.

_Adam Young_  
_4 Hogback Lane_  
_Tadfield_

...Tadfield.

 _Tadfield_.

“Bloody Heaven!” Crowley shouts, to no one in particular. “You clever bastard! You figured it out! You—”

Aziraphale had done it: he’d found the Antichrist, and called Crowley, and freed Hastur, and arranged his own demise. Despite all his talk of Heaven, despite abandoning Crowley for those who didn’t give one whit about him, _twice_ , Aziraphale had made his decision— had in the end called Crowley, to tell him how to save the world.

(Abandoning is a strong word. It has never been a question of Aziraphale choosing who cares for him the most, or who he cares for the most: it has always been a question of right and wrong, because Aziraphale has spent all of time believing that Heaven is by nature good and Crowley is by nature evil, and six thousand years of temptation could never convince Aziraphale to choose evil.

Which means one of two things: either Aziraphale believed in the end that Crowley and the Earth and humanity are good, or he didn’t and had chosen them anyway, and both of those options are equal parts elating and wretched.)

Aziraphale had died saving the world, and by Satan or God or whoever else there was to swear on Crowley would try his damned best to do the same.

“Right! Tadfield.” Heart pounding, hands shaking, Crowley tosses the map onto the passenger seat and starts the car. “They got your bookshop, angel, but they’re not getting your blessed sushi.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Aziraphale arrives at Crowley's flat. Crowley waxes poetic about how sad he is some more. Things get better.

Aziraphale steals the first car he sees and frantically directs it to Crowley’s flat.

The other demons are not like Crowley. Other demons lie— not merely about silly things, like the reasons behind acts of kindness or what they had for breakfast this morning, but about everything. About what you want, about how to get it, and about anything and everything that might bring you closer to sin. Or despair.

Hastur was in Crowley’s flat, and Crowley was not. That doesn’t mean something terrible has happened to Crowley.

Even Aziraphale’s panic and insistence are not enough to convince his stolen ride to go faster than sixty miles an hour, so he has rather more time than usual to consider what he’s doing. What he might find.

Hastur clearly isn’t all that smart. Definitely not smarter than Crowley. Crowley knows exactly what holy water would do to him. A demon like Hastur wouldn’t steal it away from him so easily.

But how, then, did Hastur know Crowley had holy water in the first place?

Well, knowing it was there doesn’t mean he used it. Crowley might have tried to kill him with it, and… missed, or something like that. And then fled.

Yes, that’s almost certainly what happened. It was just a rare moment of demonic genius on Hastur’s part, a lie. Nothing more.

_I forgive you._

He had known it might be the last time he would ever speak to Crowley. His words had been a deliberate choice. Crowley believed himself unforgivable? Aziraphale would forgive him. He had said…

Aziraphale swallows.

He had said some truly terrible things, at the bandstand. Nothing he hadn’t said before, of course. That Crowley was a demon, which he knew. That they were on opposite sides, which he also knew. But… while Crowley knew well enough to dispute the claim that Aziraphale didn’t like him, didn’t consider him a friend, his rejection must still have stung. After everything Crowley had done for him…

 _I forgive you_ had been Aziraphale’s only way to take it all back. The only way to tell him that— that Crowley was _good_ , that Aziraphale’s choice had not been between Crowley and good, but between Crowley and his truest hope of protecting the Earth, and by extension him. Oh, how he hopes Crowley understood…

Well, he thinks firmly, if he didn’t Aziraphale would simply have to explain. The next time they see each other.

“Stay here,” he orders the car sternly upon arrival, and with a haste most unbecoming of him Aziraphale hurries into the building.

Crowley, being dramatic, or solitary, or perhaps just enjoying the view, lives on the top floor of the building, in a suite that Aziraphale isn’t certain existed before he came to own it. And there’s a thought: if Crowley were to die, truly die, would his flat still be there? Will Aziraphale find it?

He doesn’t think about it long. Aziraphale reaches the top, and the door to Crowley’s flat is still there, at least. He considers ringing the doorbell, but decides against it: there may still be intruders. He pushes his way inside.

Normal, so far. Aziraphale decides to risk calling out.

“Crowley?”

No answer. Aziraphale swallows, and continues into the flat.

“Crowley? I— I’ve come to apologize— I’ve changed my mind…”

That’s when he feels it. There has been holy water in this flat for quite some time now, of course— half a century, thereabouts. But even Aziraphale was never privy to its hiding place, where now he can smell it in the air, feel it in the ground—

“Crowley?!” he calls out again, hating how his voice trembles. “Crowley, please—”

The door to the Throne Room (uppercase, of course) is open, and Aziraphale can smell sulphur.

Shreds of a plant mister on the ground. Tartan thermos on the table. Holy water and what used to be a demon spattered at Aziraphale’s feet.

“Oh, Crowley…!”

Aziraphale kneels (collapses) and reaches out with his angelic senses, trying to find something, anything to chase away the growing pit inside him. It doesn’t have to have been Crowley. Hastur had been in Crowley’s flat, after all.

But there’s nothing. The puddle on the floor of Crowley’s apartment is not a demon anymore, bears no traces of whatever it used to be. The demon who bore it no longer exists, and what was once their body is now an utterly mundane liquid with no unholy energy whatsoever, completely unidentifiable.

It can’t be.

“Oh…!” Aziraphale inhales, though it sounds more like a gasp. He shoots to his feet, abruptly, and moves forward into the room.

“Crowley!” he cries. “Crowley, please! If you’re in here— Oh, Crowley dear, please tell me you’re alright!”

But there is no answer. Crowley is not in this room, or the next, or the next.

Crowley is not here.

The flat has always been wide and empty, dark and oppressive in a way that makes Aziraphale click his tongue, but he has never felt so alone in all his long life. Aziraphale checks everywhere, throwing back Crowley’s covers as though he could be hidden beneath them, waving a hand and watching as all the cupboards slam open in what passes for his kitchen, searching desperately even though he knows he won’t find anything because _what if_ —

But when he reaches the last nook, the final cranny, and Crowley is not there, Aziraphale slows to a halt. Stares unseeing into space.

He doesn’t scream. There’s no point. No sound could possibly fill the vast expanse of his anguish.

Aziraphale lets his legs fold beneath him again, dumping him in a heap on the floor. Crowley’s flat has never been his home. Now it is his tomb. This is all that’s left of him. Crowley was always thinking about the future, but his future is gone. He can never be forgiven now.

No one has ever cared enough to forgive Crowley. Not the angels, not the demons, and not God. No one but Aziraphale.

_That was a long time ago._

He never wanted forgiveness, Aziraphale realizes distantly. He had wanted for someone— someone whose opinion meant something to tell him that he didn’t need it. That he was and has always been worth caring for, worth hurting for, worth saving.

_I forgive you._

Aziraphale makes a sound halfway between a sob and a gasp, and buries his face in his hands. He has only ever loved Crowley despite what he was, and Crowley knew it.

It’s unbecoming of an angel to cry. They aren’t supposed to have emotions. But Aziraphale takes exactly four seconds trying to stop himself before he realizes it doesn’t matter: soon all of this will be gone, trampled beneath the feet of supernatural beings who didn’t think twice before destroying the best friend Aziraphale has ever had.

So he cries, curling in on himself because he can’t handle sitting upright. Crowley is gone, has died believing that Aziraphale wanted him to be something he couldn’t, that his friendship and his love are and have always been conditional. Aziraphale had outright told him they weren’t friends. Their last conversation had been an argument.

Aziraphale hadn’t even said goodbye.

He hadn’t said goodbye. He’d thought— he’d thought he could get through to God, or that her glorified secretary could make Heaven see reason. He’d thought there was no need for goodbyes. He would stop Armageddon, follow Crowley to Alpha Centauri and gently coax forgiveness out of the demon, just as he always has. But Crowley didn’t even make it out his own door.

Killed in his own flat, by his own stock of holy water.

Aziraphale heaves a sob. He killed Crowley. He gave Crowley the means to destroy himself, and then abandoned him at his most frightened. If Aziraphale had gone with him— if Aziraphale had said yes— Crowley wouldn’t have been alone in his flat when Hastur arrived. He would have been with Aziraphale, a born warrior and a dangerous enemy. The holy water would have remained safely in the thermos. It wouldn’t have been used against him.

But Aziraphale would never have said yes, not while he still believed the world could be saved. So the final hope for Crowley had passed over 50 years ago, when Aziraphale handed him the means of his own demise.

(He would have died anyway, a small but largely unhelpful part of him whispers. You saved his life then, traded his life for this moment and 50 more years of friendship. It was worth it.)

Crowley is dead, dead, by Aziraphale’s own hand, and Aziraphale has done nothing but hurt him, and all his chances to make it better are gone.

...There is a sound in the next room.

Aziraphale ignores it for some seconds, trying to pull himself together. There’s little point, of course, but Aziraphale has an eternity to grieve and only a few hours to sear the memory of Crowley’s flat into his mind. So he holds back another sob, dries his tearstained face on his jacket instead of his handkerchief, and picks himself up alongside the shards of his broken heart.

It’s coming from the plant room.

Aziraphale has always advocated for kinder treatment of Crowley’s beleaguered plants. He knows— knew— it was only a deflection of Crowley’s own feelings, but that had always been a problem for another day. He wonders if the plants are celebrating Crowley’s death, or if they feel as the demon once felt: unwillingly devoted to a master who demands too much of them.

He steps into the bright room, feeling exposed and vulnerable under the halides. The plants are definitely not celebrating: they seem panicked, shaking frantically and only becoming more agitated as he approaches. If Aziraphale didn’t know better, he might have thought them desperately trying to get his attention.

“You’re beautiful,” he says in lieu of greeting, because it may be the last time any of them ever hear it. He reaches out to caress a soft, waxy leaf, and upon contact—

_alivealivealivealivehe’salive_

Aziraphale jerks his hand back with wide eyes, nearly taking the leaf with him. Plants don’t have thoughts, of course. And if they did, they wouldn’t think in words. But if he had to put words to what he’d felt, just then…

The rest of his mind finally catches up. His vestigial heart finally stops in his chest, unable to take any more.

“He’s alive?” he asks weakly, as though they could answer him.

The plants shake frantically. Aziraphale reaches out to touch one again.

_yesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyes_

Aziraphale’s hand trembles. He cannot make sense of what he’s being told.

“Where?”

_youyouyouyouyouyouyouyouyou_

Me, Aziraphale thinks blankly, trying to understand. Crowley is…

And then it hits him. He hadn’t seen Crowley’s Bentley parked outside on his way in.

“Fuck,” Aziraphale spits unthinkingly, nearly diving for the phone. Crowley must have— it doesn’t matter how Crowley did it. Crowley’s plants claim he’s alive: if he hasn’t gone to Alpha Centauri, oh please let him have gone, then his only other possible stop would have been the bookshop. The bookshop, consumed by hellfire, with Hastur inside.

(He’d thought that the loss of the bookshop would hurt more, but he thinks of Crowley seeing it and—)

He does have Crowley’s mobile number memorized, despite his refusal to obtain one himself, so he scrambles for the phone and punches the number in with more difficulty than it should have taken an angel of the Lord. Aziraphale doesn’t know what is left to swear upon, but if anyone at all is listening— _please_ , he thinks, _please let him pick it up_ , because if he does then Aziraphale can simply do as Hastur did and they can be together again, and right at this moment that is the only thing that matters to him.

* * *

For better or for worse, Crowley leaves London too soon to find himself caught in the inferno.

(In God’s humble opinion, this is worse. She does love a good triumph, and the chance to prove that Crowley is stronger than he believes, and Agnes worked so hard on her lovely prophecies. But one takes what one can get, and there is one player yet to leave the city proper, anyway.)

He rockets toward Tadfield as quickly as his beloved car will allow, but even that is not fast enough to prevent him from having thoughts. He doesn’t know what he’ll do when he finds the antichrist. Killing him is naturally number one on the list of possible courses of action, but…

The boy is eleven. It had taken Crowley thousands of years to learn the difference between right and wrong, and to kill a boy simply because he couldn’t manage it in a mere decade…

It’s wrong, simply put. He’d known it the moment he suggested it, but now that Aziraphale is gone there’s nothing left on Earth or in Heaven worth doing wrong for.

(It’s wrong to blow things up and it’s wrong to abandon humanity to its fate, but most of the time Crowley doesn’t mind being wrong if being wrong protects his angel.)

So, barring a last-minute change of heart, Crowley can’t kill the boy. He has to be Good enough for both of them, now.

Find the boy. Decide if he’s a nice kid, probably. Maybe talk him into not ending the world.

Satan’s bollocks, Crowley is fucked.

He can’t do it. Oh, he’ll go, and maybe an obvious solution will present itself, but right now Crowley is speeding his way to Tadfield with only the faintest glimmer of an empty hope. And for what? Crowley really does love humans, and this wretched, rotting world they live in. He would have saved them for their own sake. But there will be no more lunches at the Ritz, no more clandestine meetings in parks, no more give and take and give again and enjoy it, because he always loved just giving, and now—

Crowley violently wipes his eyes with his sleeve. He must have lost his glasses in the fight, he thinks.

Fight. How horribly unfair, that Crowley had managed to best Hastur where a trained fighter like Aziraphale had…

He shakes his head. He can’t think about it. He can’t.

His literally-God-forsaken mobile begins ringing in his pocket. There aren’t a whole lot of people with this number, so Crowley fishes it out to look at it, out of curiosity.

His flat. Probably another demon sent to collect him. He tosses it out the window, just in case; he doesn’t have the time to discorporate anyone else, and Hastur has probably told them it’s possible to travel through the phone system by now.

Hastur. _Hastur._

Crowley wishes he had some holy water left over for him. He doesn’t have the power or the stomach to hurt Hastur for eternity, but to erase him— to erase him the way he erased Aziraphale—

The road ahead of him blurs. Crowley wipes violently at his eyes again, but this time it’s no use.

In the end, Aziraphale’s fate is his fault. If he had killed them both, if he had been strong enough, if he’d thought of literally any other way to keep Hastur imprisoned in his flat…

Aziraphale had finally decided to put his trust in Crowley, and died for it. No more old bookshops. No more clandestine meetings in parks. No more bright smiles at unexpected gifts, no more stupid puppy eyes for little favors, no more endearing noises as he enjoys some otherwise perfectly mundane little dish. Aziraphale is gone, _gone_ , and Crowley—

Well, Crowley can’t afford to cry while he’s driving. He has a world to save— if not for himself then for humanity. For Aziraphale.

* * *

Aziraphale groans as his call goes to answering machine. That could mean anything at all— that Crowley is busy, that he’s not paying attention, that he’s already halfway to Alpha Centauri and is deliberately ignoring Aziraphale out of spite. But whatever else it means, it also means that Aziraphale cannot simply travel through the phone to join him.

Crowley could be anywhere. But he had been on his way to Aziraphale’s bookshop, and so Aziraphale chooses to hope.

“Right,” he mutters to himself. “Tadfield. World ending. Forgive me, my dear Crowley. If you see him before I do,” he calls to the plants, “tell him I’m looking for him! I’ll be in Tadfield until the world ends.”

The plants shake a little in acknowledgement, and with one last determined nod to himself Aziraphale sets down the phone and turns to leave the flat.

Hopefully no one has stolen his vehicle back.

* * *

Madame Tracy and Shadwell are already in Tadfield, though not where they’re supposed to be: they’ve managed to catch up with Newt and Anathema, and as a result they are all crammed into a military complex computer room trying to figure out how not to destroy the world.

Crowley is irritably arguing with an American soldier when he feels the arrival of the antichrist. It’s really not so much feeling him, per se; he’s no better at locating the antichrist than he was while actually looking for him, but with his name in mind Crowley turns and looks upon the four children approaching on bicycles and instantly knows which is the one he wants.

The soldier is clearly torn between handling the grown man demanding to be let in and handling the literal children simply letting themselves in without asking. There’s no way he’ll be able to catch up with anyone on a bicycle, even a group of eleven-year-olds, but that doesn’t stop him from trying momentarily.

As such, Crowley is standing alone trying to subtly nudge the soldier into forgetting his presence altogether when the roar of an engine splits the air.

His concentration on his task breaks, and he turns in confusion to see a perfectly ordinary modern car tearing up the road toward the airstrip. Perfectly ordinary, that is, except for the fact that it is currently ablaze. Crowley gapes open-mouthed at it, as though doing so will explain why it is on fire and how in the world it managed to drive all this way without falling apart.

And perhaps his gaping does have some effect, because all his questions are answered: the driver’s side door opens, and with one smooth motion that Crowley hadn’t even known he was capable of out steps—

“Aziraphale,” he croaks, paralyzed to the bone.

“Crowley!” Aziraphale cries, as though Crowley hadn’t seen his shop go up in Hellfire and endured Hastur’s taunts and _mourned_ , poorly perhaps but mourned all the same, and Aziraphale steps out of a blazing car with the brightest smile Crowley has ever seen on the angel and hurries forward in that fussy way and—

“Crowley, you’re here,” he goes on, as though Crowley could have been anywhere else. Then he opens his arms and… _hugs him_ , actually hugs him, and any progress Crowley had made in straightening out his thoughts is tossed right into the burning car before him. “Oh, Crowley, I thought— I was so worried— Oh, it’s so good to see you, my dear boy, truly.”

Aziraphale then takes Crowley’s face in his hands and beams, wide-eyed and joyful and maybe even about to cry oh that does it—

“What the fuck,” Crowley rasps, in lieu of anything more coherent or useful.

“I’m so sorry,” Aziraphale whispers, his voice breaking. “If you’re here— if you’re here, then you must have seen—”

Crowley takes Aziraphale’s face in both hands, not that there’s any need: he can already feel it, the familiar warmth that is uniquely his, proof that the phantom standing in front of him is no hallucination of grief.

“You’re dead,” he says blankly, around a stone in his throat.

“I’m not,” Aziraphale says at once. “I escaped. Whatever you saw— whatever happened, if you came to the bookshop looking for me— I wasn’t there. I’m right here, safe and sound, my dear.”

Crowley clutches at white-blond hair in a way that must surely be painful, but Aziraphale allows it, tilting their heads together. The world is ending in twenty minutes and a frazzled American with a gun seems to be yelling at the back of Crowley’s head, but all that matters is that his angel still exists, here, in his arms.

“You came back,” Aziraphale says quietly. “You could have taken your things and left, but—”

“Not without you,” Crowley croaks at once. “No point without you.”

“My dear…”

“Uh,” the soldier says loudly, in a tone indicating that he is not at all confused and in fact merely wishes to get their attention. “I’m gonna have to ask you two to leave.”

Crowley snaps his fingers, and the soldier vanishes. He couldn’t possibly care less to where.

“My dear,” Aziraphale says again, after several long moments of sharing breath. “You came here for a reason, didn’t you?”

Crowley swallows. He hadn’t had any time to come to terms with Aziraphale’s death, and now he has no time to come to terms with the fact that he’s alive again. All in all, it should balance out.

“Yeah,” he says. “Let’s go… do something. I don’t know.”

Aziraphale laughs, and hooks his arm into Crowley’s.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Once again in the grand tradition of twoshots, this is now a three-parter, because it's been SO LONG i didn't want to leave you guys hanging again.
> 
> Next time, they have a heartfelt chat!
> 
> Also this is absolutely not edited please let me know if there are obvious errors, be they spelling or grammar or logic fffff.

**Author's Note:**

> Up next: Az finds what he thinks is confirmation of his fears, everyone is sad for a while, and then it all gets better c:


End file.
